Books of the Month for November 2017

Discover the Books of the Month for November – there’s something for everyone!

MODERN FICTIONSelection Day – Aravind Adiga

A moving and beautifully observed novel, of adolescence, ambition and self-realization, of fathers and sons, set in contemporary Bombay, by the Man Booker Prize winning author of The White Tiger and Last Man in Tower.

Manjunath Kumar is fourteen. He knows he is good at cricket – if not as good as his elder brother Radha. He knows that he fears and resents his domineering and cricket-obsessed father, admires his brilliantly talented sibling and is fascinated by the world of CSI and by curious and interesting scientific facts. But there are many things, about himself and about the world, that he doesn’t know…

Join our Modern Fiction reading group and discuss this book, in Uppsala on Nov 23rd and in Stockholm Nov 21st. Sign up in the bookshop.

CLASSICSThe Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark

Romantic, heroic, comic and tragic, unconventional schoolmistress Jean Brodie has become an iconic figure in post-war fiction. Her glamour, unconventional ideas and manipulative charm hold dangerous sway over her girls at the Marcia Blaine Academy - ’the crème de la crème’ - who become the Brodie ’set’, introduced to a privileged world of adult games that they will never forget. Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was adapted into a successful stage play, and later a film starring the great Maggie Smith.

A Scottish classic, beautifully written and leaves you wrestling with the dilemmas presented long after reading it.

Why not join our Classics reading group and discuss this book? Sign up at the bookshop. Meetings in Uppsala Nov 15th and Stockholm Nov 23rd.

SHORT STORIESAmerican Housewife – Helen Ellis

They smoke their eyes and paint their lips. They channel Beyoncé while doing household chores. They drown their sorrows with Chanel No. 5 and host book clubs where chardonnay trumps Charles Dickens. They redecorate. And they are quietly capable of kidnapping, breaking and entering, and murder.

Vicious, fresh and darkly hilarious, American Housewife is a collection of stories for anyone who has ever wondered what really goes on behind the façades of the housewives of America…

It’s practically a Royal Marriage! The highly eligible son of Miss Seeton’s old friends Sir George and Lady Colveden has wed the daughter of a French count. Miss Seeton lends her talents to the village scheme to create a quilted Bayeux Tapestry of local history, inspired by the wedding. But her intuitive sketches reveal a startlingly different perspective involving buried Nazi secrets, and links to the mysterious death of a diplomat and to a South American dictator…

Serene amidst every kind of skulduggery, this eccentric English spinster steps in where Scotland Yard stumbles.

Welcome to Unknown Pleasures, a food stand in Taipei’s night market named after a Joy Division album, and also the location for a new mystery set in the often undocumented Taiwan. August is Ghost Month in Taiwan – a time to pay respects to the dead and avoid unlucky omens...

”A sidewalk noodle shop in Taipei’s Shilin Night Market during summer’s Ghost Month is the vivid backdrop for Ed Lin's Ghost Month . . . The plot twists come fast and furious as the story reaches its climax. Come for the exotic food and fascinating setting; stay for the characters.” – The Boston Globe

We’ll discuss this book in our Crime reading group in Uppsala on Nov 27th. Sign up at the bookshop.

SCIENCE FICTIONSleeping Giants – Sylvain Neuvel

Deadwood, USA. A girl sneaks out just before dark to ride her new bike. Suddenly, the ground disappears beneath her. Waking up at the bottom of a deep pit, she sees an emergency rescue team above her. The people looking down see something far stranger... The end has just begun.

We’ll discuss this book in our Sci-Fi reading group in Uppsala on Nov 28th Nov and in Stockholm on Nov 15th. Sign up at the bookshop.

FANTASYCaraval – Stephanie Garber

Welcome to Caraval, where nothing is quite what it seems.Scarlett has never left the tiny isle of Trisda, pining from afar for the wonder of Caraval, a once-a-year week-long performance where the audience participates in the show.

Caraval is Magic. Mystery. Adventure. And for Scarlett and her beloved sister Tella it represents freedom and an escape from their ruthless, abusive father. When the sisters’ long-awaited invitations to Caraval finally arrive, it seems their dreams have come true. But no sooner have they arrived than Tella vanishes, kidnapped by the show’s mastermind organiser, Legend.

A mesmerising, magical and stunningly imaginative debit novel for anyone who loved The Night Circus and Daughter of Smoke and Bone.

London, 1890. Captain John Hardwick, an embittered army veteran and opium addict, is released from captivity in Burma and returns home, only to be recruited by a mysterious gentlemen s club to combat a supernatural threat to the British Empire. This is the tale of a secret war between parallel universes, between reality and the supernatural; a war waged relentlessly by an elite group of agents; unsung heroes, whose efforts can never be acknowledged, but by whose sacrifice we are all kept safe.

Not too far in the future, both capital and labour are globalized: workers are trapped in poverty with no one to represent their rights. But a group of teenagers spread across the world are set to fight this injustice using an unusual tool – their online video games.​

A provocative and exhilarating tale of teen rebellion against global corporations from the New York Times bestselling author of Little Brother.

An intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of the latest thinking about love, language, and family. A timely and genre-bending memoir that offers fresh and fierce reflections on motherhood, desire, identity and feminism.

At the centre of The Argonauts is the love story between Maggie Nelson and the artist Harry Dodge, who is fluidly gendered. As Nelson undergoes the transformations of pregnancy, she explores the challenges and complexities of mothering and queer family making.

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General Fiction Book of the Month – March 2018

What We Lose is a short, intense and profoundly moving debut novel about race, identity, sex and death – from one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35.
Thandi is a black woman, but often mistaken for Hispanic or Asian. She is American, but doesn’t feel as American as some of her friends. She is South African, but doesn’t belong in South Africa either.
And her mother is dying...Subscribe to the book-of-the-month!

Mystery Book of the Month – March 2018

A smart, twisty crime novel filled with compelling characters set in a world that book-lovers will adore. This debut is a page-turner featuring a heroine bookseller who solves a cold case with clues from books — what is not to love?
(We'll discuss this book at the pub in our Book&Pint discussion on March 27th. Get your book & ticket at the bookshop if you want to join in!) » Read moreSubscribe to the book-of-the-month!